Read about my adventure in building replica droids from the Star Wars Saga.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

A Wooden Leg Named Smith

Sorry I didn't post last week. Last week was very busy. So here are two weeks worth of updates.

To start, you should know that in making the leg template, I have had to remake it 3 times due to making little mistakes that would distort the correct shape. The Leg pic from last time is of the second attempt. Well I messed up when I was trimming it and had to make another one. Luckily, 3rd time is the charm. Using the lessons I learned from the first two, I was able to make a perfect cutout of the full leg pattern.

In order to keep the edges straight, I set a pivot point in the leg which would allow me to rotate it agaist the sanding disc and get the correct curve angle. I then put stops on each end of the base board under the leg so the leg would stop moving in a straight position.

Rotating the leg.

This is the template after using the disc sander. Now I just need to trim the middle edges.

I came up with the idea to use the router table with the riding head. I screwed straight blocks right on the line I wanted to trim to. These blocks will stop the router bit.

The silver disc on the router bit rest against the blocks, trimming the template flush with the blocks. Perfection.

Template is now complete. Now I can use it to make copies to build the legs.

Here are 3 rough cuts of the legs.

Here I have screwed the template on top of one of the rough cuts. I will now use the router to trim the rough cut to match the template.

Eight 1/2" trimmed legs. I still require four 3/4" and two 1/4" cut outs.

Unfortunately the bandsaw broke again before I would cutout the rest of the pieces.

Here I am trimming off part of the ankle of the leg. This is so the leg will look correct once all the pieces are layered together. I'll explain more once I have all the pieces.

While I was working, one of my older cousins stopped by to see my Grandmother and her 2 kids found me in the garage. They were impressed with my "robot" (Industrial Automation R6-series Astromech Droid) and wanted to "buy" it. Sure. Got a few thousand dollars in the piggy bank, lol. I will hopefully have the bandsaw working again by next week so I can continue the leg building.